First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Colossians 1

“Visible and Invisible”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

November 25, 2007

About a month ago Lorraine Revelle asked if I would speak to the Northern Choral Society. Next weekend one of the songs they will sing is based upon a poem from the seventeenth century. It’s an obscure Latin poem written by John Milton as a young college student. Being considered as a resource for all things obscure brings a strange happiness.

Reading over the poem preparing for the 10 minutes I had been allotted in her iron clad docket of practice time, I quickly perceived the biggest challenge for folks today to appreciate what Milton was trying to say. What he had to say was intriguing and powerful, but there was a challenge for our ears. More than just readjusting our ears to seventeenth century poetry the reader needs to see that he is confessing his faith in such a way as to suggest that Christ is more than just a personal savior. The poem describes the birth of Jesus as a great event and is thus fitting for advent; yet the poem is also putting forth Jesus as a kind of cosmological event that changes the universe.

Although this notion is not completely foreign to us today, the way Milton saw the world being changed by the birth of Christ is foreign. How we look at the world and how Milton did is very different. First Milton saw the world from the ancient perspective of heaven and earth as being one, two parts of a whole. That earth was one facet of creation, but heaven was another. Where we too believe in heaven, John Milton, writing in the early seventeenth century, believed heaven and earth were not two distinct realities; he saw them interwoven as it were; they are close. For him a story like Jacob’s ladder where angels are ascending or descending as you would climb from one story to another makes a lot of sense because heaven and earth as very, very close. For us not so much. Heaven may be, but its far off- way over yonder.

So my first job was to explain how Milton saw the intimate connection of what is seen (earth) and what is unseen (heaven or the celestial). Next, I needed to convey that for him, what was unseen was the truly real; and, then, what is seen is the partial, the incomplete. Again, really different for us. The ancients saw the earth as a kind of broken, fault-ridden shell or covering what was true and beautiful- the angelic, what is heavenly, celestial, or ideal. Hence, for Milton, Jesus being born was not just the arrival of the messiah, but also the interjection of what is perfect and true and complete from above, to what is below. What was unseen and thus a mysterious truth was revealed in the flesh; the invisible became what is seen and visible. Just a bit outside of our box.

And lastly, and what was really hard to convey was that Milton saw this intimate connection of heaven and earth, what is real (heaven) and what is unrealized (earth) as having a whole new relationship in Jesus. Again, this isn’t completely unknown to us today. We speak of Jesus and sing about Jesus as the King of Kings, the first born; in a month we will sing “Joy to the World” and we will listen to shepherds recount the angel’s greetings about a savior of the world and so on. But for most this is more of a great wish, a kind of notion. Not so much for Milton; for him this was the basis of a worldview. This wasn’t a nice thought or a grandiose view; this was the way in which the world was now to be seen.

A different worldview is hard to convey. So much of a worldview is instinctual. For instance, it is hard for us to imagine an economy that is not based upon profit; it’s hard for us to imagine a political process that is not infused with rights; it’s hard for us to see the structure of society outside of the single family; and its hard for us to imagine a world that is not physical, empirical, or driven by what can be demonstrated. Soon after Milton, the world would no longer be seen as what is visible and invisible, but by what is visible only. When we talk today about what is invisible (angels, spirit, ideals, the divine) there is a pause; there is a reticence to go there. Because to do so, you have to leave behind all that is real.

It is hard to explain what Milton was saying not only because he was writing in the cryptic style of poetry; it is hard to explain what he is saying because he was on the very cusp of a complete change in worldviews. For him what was real was still the celestial; a century later the real would be the earth, what is physical; what was seen would supplant what was unseen; the visible would become the valuable and the invisible became the stuff of fairy tales.

Alright, now, deep breath. Ancient cosmologies are heavy lifting for our imaginations. We’re very smart today and technically savvy, but we’re not very imaginative. The fullness of the ancients’ way of seeing the world just doesn’t quite fit in our heads. And that is okay. Knowing such things as how the ancient Greeks looked at the world or how a seventeenth century poet looked at the birth of Christ is not required for salvation. But knowing this really helps when we read Paul.

Let’s hear a few verses from the letter of Paul again. I generally don’t like to reread a lesson, but we’ve gone to all this work so why not? Paul writes to the Colossian church and says, now, Jesus, he is the image of the invisible in God, the first born of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible. Has a different meaning now, doesn’t it?

In Paul we see the ancient cosmology at work. He sees the world as defined in terms that are visible and invisible; creation is heaven and earth together; and the things of God, or what is divine, even though they are invisible can be made manifest in creation, they can be revealed. And then further on he takes this ancient cosmology and makes some really bold claim, really radical claims. He says, in Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of the cross. In other words, with Jesus everything was changed and by everything Paul means everything.

While John Milton had a tendency to kind of mix and match history and philosophy and doctrine to his own liking, on this point his poem of Christ’s birth is a pretty straightforward commentary on Paul’s letter to the Colossians. The birth of Jesus wasn’t just an image of God’s love; it wasn’t just a way of understanding God; and, most importantly, it wasn’t just an act of mercy for us, for an individual believer. The birth of Jesus was a whole new world, a whole new relationship of creation to God; a kind of peace for both heaven and earth won upon the cross; it changed everything.

Having said this, Paul reverses course and describes what it does for an individual. Again, this is hard for us to grasp. We tend to imagine the world as starting within and then moving from us as far as we can see- the visible. Paul does just the opposite. He sees the world from invisible being revealed on the cross and there is nothing beyond its reach, or light it has cast. An individual is in the midst of this, but it doesn’t begin and end in us. In a strange way, it’s not about us. It’s about God being pleased; it never mentions our pleasure. This is hard to imagine today as so much of what we do or do not do is based upon what pleases us. The idea that God would be pleased or not pleased sounds a bit odd. If God is perfect isn’t he always happy?

Yet, what is really odd is the next verse. Paul writes, I am now rejoicing in my suffering for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is the church. Lacking? God didn’t complete salvation? What is missing?

Preparing for my recent trip to Turkey I taught a class on Eusibius. Eusibius is the father of the early church history and thus most of what he describes took place in Asia Minor or what would become Turkey in the 1920s. He describes the events of the apostles and patricians until the time of Constantine giving great details about places we would visit.

It wasn’t long into the class, though, that we had a problem with reading Eusibius. Where Milton was cryptic, it would seem that Eusibius was all too graphic. The problem was his persistent and detailed descriptions of suffering for the sake of the church. He described in graphic detail the early martyrs who were put to death for their faith. Eusibius doesn’t go too many pages without describing a martyr being roasted, beheaded, or torn apart by the lions. It’s not that people are all that squeamish; most folks have televisions. What really tripped up the class was the idea that people would be willing to die, to endure such misery without an obvious purpose. Why would do that? And even more disturbing was how much Eusibius valued the martyrs. They were his heroes, the victors of the faith. How could such needless sacrifice be lauded?

Like my talk with Northern Choral I tried to describe the way the early church martyrs looked at the world. For them what they did, their endurance and suffering, their testimony and willingness to die revealed to the world the invisible mercy of God; it showed the new relationship between creation and God; and that by becoming part of the sacrifice Christ was willing to endure the church was coming into the world. Remember when Paul was writing to the Colossians was maybe thirty years after Christ died. The gospel was spreading through Asia Minor and Greece and had reached as far as Egypt and Rome, but it was emerging. This is when the church was coming to be.

Now here is where things get a little hard to imagine. The martyrs didn’t believe they were building a physical church, the church wasn’t a building; they were building a church that was more invisible than visible. And as they did, as they suffered, as they confessed, as they lived out their faith what was begun on the cross moved toward fulfillment; they were completing the reconciliation of the world more than they were constructing sanctuaries or writing policies or developing programs.

The martyrs were willing to die not because they were fanatics or zealots who had lost sight of reality; they were willing to die because they believed that by their faithfulness, by not rejecting what they believed, they were bringing about a new world for all. It’s hard today to convey the power of such beliefs. Beliefs are very personal and really the domain of the individual for us. A kind of consequence for others is nice, but it is almost accidental. For the early church what you believed, what you lived had consequence; it made a difference.

On our first full day in Istanbul, walking through one of the palaces of the Ottoman Empire I made an offer to our tour guide, Hakan. I said, “Whenever you would like me to do a devotional I will.” Hakan blanched. He started to speak quickly about public displays of faith; he gave me a sense that Turkey had freedom to be a practicing Muslim or to be a non-practicing Muslim, but there was no third option. For me to engage in some sort of act of religious devotion would be a real problem.

Later when he realized that what I was offering was more of a short lesson with a prayer, he became much more comfortable. But what was so intriguing was the way he took the word “devotion.” For him what we would do as Christians could have real power, it could really cause problems. A public display of faith could result in some real alarm.

What I found so intriguing was how little I considered our devotion a threat, something of real consequence to the world. I can share my faith, express my faith, even impose my faith, but I don’t see it as having enough power to be dangerous. From Hakan’s vantage though my faith was a very powerful force that if let loose, if expressed, could create all sorts of things.

I wasn’t just a little convicted that our Muslim tour guide held Christian faith in greater esteem and awe than a pastor. Yet, in so many words he was also confessing a greater vision of what is invisible, the power of what is unseen; he was describing how the Christian faith can break loose and change the world in ways that was just not seeing.

In the 1920s when Turkey became a nation it was 60% Muslim and 40% Christian. Within a few years almost all the Christians were “relocated” or “redistributed” outside of Turkey. Now there is less than 2% of the population that is Christian. As I walked around Western Turkey and rambled through the excavations of the early church in places like Ephesus and Pergamum and Sardis I could see the way the early church came to be; it became visible. All the while though I was mindful that Christianity had become invisible. Invisible, though, not in a spiritual sense as Paul intended, but invisible as in erased.

I was deeply convicted by the absence of a living church in what was the birthplace of the early church. Colossae was home to one of the earliest churches, yet today there are no Christians there. Walking through the ancient cities where only the rubble of churches remain it brought the sacrifice of the martyrs into sharp relief. It cast a light on the letters of Paul giving it a different image. Paul wrote this letter to the Colossians a year or so before he would be put to death for his faith.

It is possible to see the church as just what we want, where we are, what brings us pleasure. Yet, this way of seeing the church turns away from what is invisible: the power of the cross reconciling the world, the emerging church completing what is lacking . . . today. We have this powerful gospel; we are the body of Christ redeeming the world, but it seems as if this is no longer how we look at the world. It seems like it is becoming erased. Sometimes I wonder if we haven’t reduced the church to rubble by making it only what we can see.

How is it that a Muslim tour guide sees my faith as more potent than I do? Amen.